Madonna and Art

[groovyguy 63,856]

http://squaremadonna.com/2014/07/14/madonna-and-art-madonna-is-art/

 

MADONNA AND ART

 

Madonna is renowned for being an avid art collector. Her personal collection, reported to be worth £80 million, includes works by Picasso, Hopper, Kahlo, Léger, Dali, Man Ray, and Damien Hirst. During the early eighties as a struggling dancer in New York, she was friends with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and had a relationship with Jean-Michel Basquiat. (Famously, Warhol wrote in his diaries that his attendance at Madonna’s wedding to Sean Penn was “just the most exciting weekend of my lifeâ€). She presented the Turner Prize in 2001 to minimalist artist Martin Creed and also invited Tracey Emin to her Ashcombe residence for tea. Her last greatest hits collection Celebration, featured a portrait by graffiti artist Mr Brainwash.

 

Madonna isn’t just another vanity collector – she has also been inspired by the work of artists throughout her career. As master of the image, her impeccable good taste has seen her reference a wide range of artists in many of her best known works, from Haring to Warhol

Her lavish and complicated tours have all been informed by the aesthetics she has gleaned from art and as a result the work she produces has attained longevity and gravitas far behind its ‘pop’ status.

But there is one artist Madonna has particularly championed and whose paintings have had the most significant influence on her work – Tamara de Lempicka. Madonna started to collect de Lempicka paintings in the eighties, shrewdly anticipating the artist’s renaissance when prices in the art market sharply increased. Madonna is known to have bought many paintings by de Lempicka but the ones we know of for certain are Andromeda (1929), Nana de Herrera (1928), Nude with Dove (1928), and Femme a Guitar (1929) which are currently housed in her New York apartment. These paintings are frequently borrowed to galleries during retrospectives of the artist’s work featuring a small placard with Madonna’s name.

 

It could be reasonably argued that Madonna has helped significantly rehabilitate de Lempicka’s reputation, turning her into a highly collectible artist by borrowing heavily from her idiosyncratic aesthetic. In the very opening scene of the Open Your Heart (1987) music video, directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, an old style peep-show features a large reproduction of the painting Andromeda with her breasts lit up by giant bulbs and a reproduction of La Bella Raphaela placed just below it. Inside the peep-show carousel Madonna dances on a stage with several booths featuring reproductions of male portraits by de Lempicka cut out against green backgrounds. Chiming with the era most associated with de Lempicka, the video pays homage to Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel (1930), Rita Hayworth in Gilda(1946), and Liza Minelli in Cabaret (1972).

 

 

But it’s the videos for Express Yourself (1989) and Vogue (1990) that Madonna and director David Fincher most successfully combine their vision with de Lempicka’s aesthetic. Express Yourself takes its narrative cue from the 1927 Fritz Lang masterpiece Metropolis but the style is pure de Lempicka; take a look at the paintings Portrait of Marjorie Ferry (1932) and Dormeuse (1932 and 1935) and you can immediately see the similarities – the tightly coiled blonde hair, the bright red lip stick, the silk sheets as a naked woman languishes in an oversized bed. When she dons a man’s pin-striped suit there is an echo of the androgynous Portrait of the Duchess de la Salle (1925). As she dances in a basque in silhouette she echoes the Cubist, geometric accents of de Lempicka’s paintings, while the trumpeters in a rotating glass booth mimic her distinctive compositional style.

 

 

From the outset, the Vogue video explicitly worships at the altar of de Lempicka as she displays her paintings on easels amid dancers ‘striking a pose’. Andromeda, Femme a Guitar, and Nana de Herreracan all be seen in the opening shot. The video celebrates old Hollywood glamour, paying tribute to film stars of a bygone, golden era: Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn while at the same time celebrating the underground dance craze voguing (later captured in the film Paris is Burning, 1991). As well as de Lempicka’s influence there are a number of Horst P. Horst photographs faithfully recreated such as Mainbocher Corset, Lisa with Turban (1940), andCarmen Face Massage (1946).

 

 

Perhaps de Lempicka’s most significant contribution to Madonna’s work
can be seen in the conical bustier designed by Jean Paul Gaultier for her infamous Blond Ambition Tour (1990). Directly influenced by the Cubist, hyperreal cones de Lempicka used to depict breasts on her female nudes, the two bustiers – rose pink and gold – were worn during the opening number Express Yourself and the now legendary Middle-Eastern take on Like a Virgin in which Madonna cavorts with hermaphrodites before masturbating on a pillow. It is this image of Madonna in her conical bra that is her most instantly iconic (and her most parodied) and is very largely indebted to de Lempicka’s concept of the modern woman and female sexuality.

 

 

More recently, the painting Nana de Herrera featured briefly in the video for Drowned World (Substitute for Love), seen hanging on a wall as Madonna leaves her house. Her fashion campaign for Louis Vuitton’s autumn winter collection in 2010 was largely inspired by Man Ray’s solarised photographs and de Lempicka’s paintings – the strong, hyperreal colour palette, the background draperies, and the angular positioning of the body with an emphasis on the figure which are all hallmarks of the artist’s work. With Madonna’s upcoming semi-biopic of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, W.E., the film is likely to include strong influences from both de Lempicka and the Art Deco period in general. More than any other artist, de Lempicka’s work has had the biggest impact on Madonna’s work and this creative partnership looks set to continue.

 

by P.H.Davies

[Voguerista 11,776]

I love how her interest in art and how it's inspired her all of these years.....and what I'd give to see some of her collections and see her talk about them. I wish she'd do a "documentary" on it. 

[groovyguy 63,856]

^ Her love for art is real. She's not a pretender.

[Voguerista 11,776]

+1!!!

[groovyguy 63,856]

http://abcnewsradioonline.com/music-news/2013/11/1/elton-john-madonna-among-entertainment-industrys-top-25-art.html

Global pop superstars makes tons of cash, and since there are only so many mansions and cars you can buy, it’s no wonder that some of them sink their fortunes into art. The Hollywood Reporter has created a list of the entertainment industry’s “Top 25 Art Collectors,†and Madonna is on the list.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Madonna got her art start in 1987, when she paid a million bucks for a painting by renowned artist Fernand Leger.  Since then, she's amassed over 300 works, from big names such as Salvador Dali, Maxfield Parrish, Frida Kahlo, Damien Hirst and Man Ray.  In 2000, she paid $4.7 million for a Picasso work, and her collection was appraised at over $100 million in 2008.  This year, she auctioned off one of her Legers for more than seven million bucks and donated the profits to support girls' education in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

[groovyguy 63,856]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2593207/Who-real-kings-cool-National-Portrait-Gallery-runs-exhibition-100-coolest-Americans-including-Steve-McQueen-Frank-Sinatra-Miles-Davis.html

If you are in Washington DC don’t forget to visit the exhibition American Cool at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibit looks back at the stars who have shaped and embodied the concept of cool through 100 photographs of icons including Madonna.

 

The Alt-100 List recognizes those icons over whom we argued the longest and hardest. These public figures point up the richness and depth of American popular culture.

 

Photograph by Kate Simon (1983)

One of the most prominent cultural icons for over three decades, Madonna has achieved an unprecedented level of power and control for a woman in the entertainment world. 

 

[groovyguy 63,856]

Didn't want to start a new thread for this.

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/5/moore-10th-traverse-city-festival-most-popular/

http://squaremadonna.com/2014/08/05/madonna-handprints-at-the-traverse-city-film-festival-walk-of-fame/

 

Madonna handprints for the Traverse City Film Festival

 

 

TRAVERSE CITY — Filmmaker Michael Moore’s long-time dream for a Hollywood-style “Walk of Fame†in Traverse City is a step closer to becoming reality.

 

Visitors to downtown Traverse City could compare their handprints with the likes of Madonna’s, Susan Sarandon’s, Matthew Modine’s and Rosie O’Donnell’s if a design for a heated sidewalk in front of the State Theatre and other East Front Street businesses is approved.

 

Film Fest officials hope an online auction that would feature star-studded items will help pay for the Walk of Fame, which festival founder Moore hopes will be installed “before it starts snowing on Labor Day.â€

 

“I hope it raises $30,000 or $40,000 at a minimum to pay for this,†Moore said. “I would love to raise over $100,000 to keep it maintained for a while.â€

[groovyguy 63,856]

M has always been part of the POPART. 

 

 

[Fighter 28,798]

Madonna is the art. 

[Guest]

^ Her love for art is real. She's not a pretender.

[groovyguy 63,856]

#Madonna By #KateSimon '83 portrait @NPG in #DC #nationalportraitgallery #smithsonian #AmericanCool #CulturalICON

[groovyguy 63,856]

http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/detroit/index.ssf/2014/08/madonna_detroit_institute_of_a.

Madonna, Detroit Institute of Arts could collaborate for Frida Kahlo exhibit; pop legend an avid collector

DETROIT, MI -- Madonna could play a key role in a Detroit Institute of Arts celebration this spring of a Mexican artist that was the focus of a 2002 movie starring Selma Hayek.

 

The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) confirmed Tuesday in a statement sent to MLive.com that "The Material Girl" is an avid collector of Frida Kahlo, the wife of painter Diego Rivera.

 

That leads to speculation Madonna — born in Bay City and raised in Pontiac and Rochester HIlls — could be willing to sell some of her Kahlo collection to the DIA or loan it out for an upcoming exhibit called "Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit."

 

Several attempts by MLive.com to reach Madonna's publicist Liz Rosenberg, to gauge her client's interest in selling or loaning part of her Kahlo collection to the DIA, were unsuccessful.

 

But Madonna has appeared to have a renewed interest in Detroit, its charities and efforts to overcome bankruptcy. Less than two month ago, she agreed to help fund three organizations in the city including a youth boxing gym.

 

Work displayed by Rivera and Kahlo, best known for her self-portraits, should make for one of the most popular DIA exhibits in recent memory. It be held March 15 to July 12.

 

Madonna's has said often publicly that Kahlo is an inspiration to her, and she reportedly wanted to play the role of Kahlo in the 2002 film "Frida" before Hayek received it.

 

She even wrote last fall in an essay for Harper's Bazaar that Kahlo's mustache in her self-portrait helped her tackle living in New York city.

 

An excerpt from the essay:

“Sometimes I would play the victim and cry in my shoe box of a bedroom with a window that faced a wall, watching the pigeons s*** on my windowsill. And I wondered if it was all worth it,†she wrote.

“But then I would pull myself together and look at a postcard of Frida Kahlo taped to my wall, and the sight of her mustache consoled me. Because she was an artist who didn’t care what people thought. I admired her.

 

She was daring. People gave her a hard time. Life gave her a hard time. If she could do it, then so could I.â€

 

It's unclear exactly how many Kahlo paintings Madonna owns, but the website FridaKahloFans.com says she at least owns Kahlo's 1940 "Self Portrait with Monkey."

 

The reported sale price for that painting: a cool $1 million.

 

Rivera lived with Kahlo in Detroit in the early 1930s and painted the two iconic Detroit Industry murals that are displayed inside the DIA's main entrance.

 

These works of art took most of 1932 and 1933 to create, and they were commissioned Edsel Ford, according to The New Yorker.

Rivera died Nov. 24, 1957 at the age of 70 in Mexico City; Kahlo was 47 when she died July 13, 1954 in Mexico City.

 

News of Madonna's collection of Kahlo artwork and the DIA exhibit comes the same week that news surfaced about a new opera focussed on Kahlo life's.

 

"Frida" opens March 7 and March 8 at the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts in Clinton Township.

 

Subsequent performances will be held March 21-22 at the Berman Center for the Performing Arts in West Bloomfield and March 28 at the DIA's Detroit Film Theatre, 5200 Woodward Ave. in Detroit.

 

For more information, visit the opera's website.

[Fighter 28,798]

Thank you that's very interesting. Would love to know everything Madonna owns from these amazing artists. 

[groovyguy 63,856]

Marvel at #Madonna's greatest 200 magazine covers by #BoyCulture's Matthew Rettenmund

http://www.boyculture.com/boy_culture/2014/09/madonnas-200-greatest-magazine-covers.html

 

Unlike any star since—and unlike only a precious few before—her, Madonna has made the act of being on the cover of a magazine into an art form. A gung-ho participant in creating a visual record of her beauty, her aesthetic, her political and quasi-punk challenging of social norms and her status as a visual icon, Madonna has always taken her covers seriously, in some cases as seriously as other rockstars take music videos or even albums. - See more at: http://www.boyculture.com/boy_culture/2014/09/madonnas-200-greatest-magazine-covers.html#sthash.f0qQFiRp.dpuf

[groovyguy 63,856]

"Scandal Star @guillermodiazyo Shows Off Madonna Tattoo"

http://www.eonline.com/news/590410/scandal-star-shows-off-madonna-tattoo-talks-going-full-frontal

[groovyguy 63,856]

Madonna holds out on DIA's Kahlo exhibit

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/arts/2014/12/25/madonna-holds-dias-kahlo-exhibit/20902881/

When Madonna blew through Detroit on a rare visit last June, she put her concern for the city front and center, dropping in on worthy organizations from a charter elementary school to a startup that helps outfit the homeless for winter.

 

The superstar did not, however, stop by the Detroit Institute of Arts, despite the fact that curators had been trying for over a year to win her agreement to a loan of the seminal painting, Frida Kahlo's "My Birth," for the DIA's upcoming exhibition, "Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit." The exhibition opens March 15.

 

Hayden Herrera, who wrote the definitive biography of Kahlo, called the painting's absence from the show "a huge omission."

 

"My Birth" is one of five paintings Kahlo completed in Detroit, of which the DIA secured three. Like Kahlo's "Henry Ford Hospital," which will be in the show, "My Birth" represents a turning point in the young artist's career, when she began using her own body and experience as subject matter, often to shocking effect.

 

"We tried to get it," said Mark Rosenthal, DIA adjunct curator for contemporary art who organized the show. "You have no idea what we went through. But I can't describe all that."

 

Madonna's New York publicist Liz Rosenberg wrote in an email, "We will not be commenting on this."

 

A loan to a museum would not have been unprecedented. Madonna allowed London's Tate Modern to exhibit "My Birth," which shows a bloody, adult-looking Kahlo emerging from between her mother's legs, as part of their 2005 Kahlo show.

 

Nor is this apparently a case of indifference. Madonna is said to be deeply attached to the painting. In a 1990 essay in the New York Times, author Herrera said the one-time Detroiter uses the painting as a test.

 

"Those who do not like 'My Birth,' " she wrote, "are dismissed."

 

According to Herrera, the painting —finished shortly after Kahlo returned to Detroit after her mother's death — refers both to that loss and Kahlo's own miscarriage at Henry Ford Hospital on July 4, 1932.

 

Kahlo came to Detroit early in 1932 with Rivera, her husband, who'd been commissioned to paint the "Detroit Industry" murals at the DIA. While Kahlo painted before her arrival in the Motor City, it was here that her art shifted toward Surrealism.

 

"In Detroit, she had these powerful emotional upheavals," Rosenthal said, "which became the impetus to paint her interior life. Diego recognized it right away," he added, "as something unseen in art history — a woman painting her emotional life in such a vulnerable, unabashed way."

 

Bad enough to lose out on a critical work, even if the others in the DIA show are likely to wow visitors. But the museum's never gotten a firm answer one way or another from the superstar or her representatives.

 

"There are people at the museum who still hope," Rosenthal said, "but my wife calls that magical thinking."

 

Of Madonna, Vince Carducci, editor of the online Motown Review of Art and dean of undergraduate studies at the College for Creative Studies, said, "People are funny. You never can tell with collectors. My suspicion is that the request never bubbled up to her. Or," he added, "maybe she was going to have Kate Middleton to lunch and needed it as a litmus test."

[groovyguy 63,856]

"Madonna supports the i-art intelligence Artistique project" http://www.i-art.dance/  

[DiscoThomas 1,171]

Interesting reads, thanks.

 

I love Lempicka.  I have several hung in my house, alas, not the originals but still beautifully striking.

 

Also a big fan of Dali and Delauney...

 

[groovyguy 63,856]

Madonna acrylic portrait by French illustrator Olivier Coulon 

https://instagram.com/p/61eH7bBxzW/

[Greeny 411]

Great article!  Thanks for sharing 

[groovyguy 63,856]

Jorge López Muñoz 

‪#‎madonna‬ â€ª#‎petercunningham‬ â€ª#‎latermica‬

[groovyguy 63,856]

MadonnaTribe â€@madonnatribe  17h17 hours ago

Madonna portrait at this year's Le Touquet sand festival in northern France #TheQueenOfSand

[groovyguy 63,856]

Madonna Is Secretly an Art World Influencer

 

 

by 

Stephanie Eckardt

August 16, 2018

https://www.wmagazine.com/story/madonna-art-collection-basquiat

Madonna has made her impact on earth known in countless ways in the 60 years that she’s been here. But not all of her impacts are so obvious. And this includes her influence on the art world: Beyond pioneering the crossover between pop and art by hanging with the likes of Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and her former flame Jean-Michel Basquiat in New York in the ’80s, Madonna’s art world impact has been made almost entirely behind the scenes.

Take for example, Basquiat, whom Madonna dated in the early ’80s, when they were both on the brink of fame. Now one of the most popular artists on the market, Basquiat died in 1988, at just 28 years old, meaning that there’s only so much of his work out there to be bought and put on display (which is partly why his work continues to break records at auction). And, as Madonna revealed to Howard Stern in 2015, there’s even less of it because of his reaction to their breakup in 1984.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT'S MILLION-DOLLAR MESSAGES

Slide 1 of 11

Next

1/11

"Moses and
the Egyptians," 1982. Acrylic and oilstick on canvas.

Guggenheim Bilbao
Museoa; Gift of
Bruno
Bischofberger,
Zurich. © The
Estate of Jean-
Michel Basquiat /
Licensed by Artestar,
New York.

Since it wasn’t out of the ordinary for Madonna to wake up in the middle of the night and find that Basquiat wasn’t lying in bed but was on his feet painting, it’s only natural that over the course of a couple of years Madonna came to own quite a few pieces of Basquiat’s art. Those, however, will never be seen. “When I broke up with him, he made me give [the paintings he gave me] back to him, and then he painted over them black,” she told Stern.

It’s unclear just how many Basquiats we lost to spite—Madonna was hardly the only notable woman he dated, although certainly the mostnotable—but we do know there’s only a single Frida Kahlo that Madonna has been keeping from the public eye, thankfully. Unfortunately, it happens to be arguably one of the most amazing works Kahlo ever produced. Painted in 1932, My Birthis true to its title: It’s a self-portrait, but Kahlo’s head isn’t in its usual place, atop her shoulders—instead, it is in the process of emerging from the womb. It’s quite a sight to see, and quite a privilege to see it, given that Madonna turned down the Detroit Institute of Arts’ many pleas to feature it in a 2015 exhibition of the works that Kahlo made while she and Diego Rivera lived in Detroit. (“You have no idea what we went through,” the institute’s adjunct curator said at the time.)

Madonna had, in fact, loaned the painting to the Tate back in 2005, and wouldn’t have exactly been artless without it; as Vanity Fairreported in 1990, back then, at least, she also owned works by Diego Rivera, Man Ray, Weegee, Tina Modotti, Herb Ritts, and even Fernand Léger. To be fair, her appreciation for the work seems to be the reason behind her unwillingness to share it: “If somebody doesn’t like this painting,” Madonna told the magazine, “then I know they can’t be my friend.”

For all the great art Madonna has effectively kept from us, she’s also gone out of her way to bring art to the mainstream—not exactly surprising, given that she’s a fan of artists like Banksy and JR, who remind her of Basquiat and Haring. “You can see Banksy’s work driving by it on the street, and JR’s work—the way he takes photographs of people and turns them into heroes in their communities and makes people proud of who they are,” she told David Blaine in 2014, adding that her son was even interning for JR.

Madonna has brought art to the streets herself in a way too, like when she used the video Green Pink Caviar by the provocative New York–based artist Marilyn Minter, with whom she’s friends, as the backdrop for a portion of her Sticky and Sweet tour, preceding its stint as part of a public art project in Los Angeles. More recently, Madonna also fundraised for her nonprofit Raising Malawi by launching a contest that would give two “art world virgins” the chance to accompany her to Art Basel Miami Beach for an ultra-exclusive, up-close look at a plethora of blue chip art (and, as it turned out, at her twerking with Ariana Grande, which has likely only appreciated in market value since).

[RodLour 14]

Madonna and art have always walked hand in hand !!!